Trustees, Beneficiaries Mark Trexler's Birthday

April 18, 1994|by DENISE REAMAN, The Morning Call

Gray clouds hovered above a group of about 40 people standing in Allentown's Fairview Cemetery yesterday, threatening rain.

Minutes later, a burst of sun broke through and the wind whipped up as the group began a service commemorating the 140th anniversary of the birth of Gen. Harry C. Trexler, Lehigh County's foremost benefactor. His multimillion-dollar estate, overseen by the Trexler Trust, has helped city parks and county programs since his death in 1933.

Flanked by local political figures, trustee Kathryn Stephanoff told how fellow trustee Philip Berman had been approached by a boy who asked why a group was gathering at the cemetery.

Berman told the boy that they would be honoring the birth of Trexler. The boy said he didn't know who Trexler was, so Berman cited several accomplishments made possible by Trexler and his estate.

Nothing clicked for the youth until Berman said it was thanks to Trexler that trout are stocked in area creeks and rivers. The boy then said that he, too, might join the ceremony honoring the late industrialist, philanthropist and conservationist.

"Perhaps," said Stephanoff, "we've let too much time go by without doing this.

"So far as I know, Harry Clay Trexler never expressed a wish to live forever, but in life and in death, his every action and deed seemed to express a fervent wish that his community should survive him," Stephanoff said.

Trexler, she said, worked to achieve unity, cooperation and a sound and expanding economy.

"Although his estate has given $42 million to this community -- more than four times what he left -- it is not his generosity that is remarkable, but his two great gifts that enabled that generosity."

Those two gifts, she said, are the ones that keep him with us -- his ability to see down the long road of time and the will and heart to take the rest of us with him.

"We call that," she said, "leadership."

The Very Rev. Daniel G. Gambet, president of Allentown College, offered a prayer of thanks to Trexler for his patriotism, loyalty and vision and for "putting his signature on Lehigh County."

The tribute also included a flag-raising by members of the Minsi Trails Council, Boy Scouts of America, and the placing of flowers on Trexler's grave by Brent and Lindsay DiRomualdo, who represented the city's playground programs.

Roughly 20 charitable and welfare groups aided by the trust were represented at the ceremony.